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The Game 2 crowd…

I’ve covered about 500 Atlantic League regular-season games — including about 10 in Southern Maryland — and 26 playoff games and never heard a ballpark as loud as Regency Furniture Stadium was Saturday night for Game 2.

Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pa. has been the standard for noise since the 2006 Championship Series — which I did not attend — and still might be, but this had to be pushing that decibel.

Regency Furniture Stadium has only 4,200 seats — fewest in the league — but has a capacity around 7,000, and the crowd of 5,372 was rocking during Game 2.

It was loud at first pitch and only grew louder after the benches cleared in the fourth inning. Travis Anderson, who was at the center of the incident, became the primary target of deafening boobirds every time his name was announced.

The crowd also erupted during manager Sparky Lyle’s tirade and clearly got under the veteran’s skin as he made a profane gesture to a group sitting behind the visitor’s dugout.

What does all this tell me? Southern Maryland has baseball fans, and I’ve always preferred crowds of 4,000 baseball fans to 6,000 dizzy bat race fans. Of course, the latter is much more prevalent in most minor-league baseball towns.

Let’s see if the Game 3 crowd lives up to that standard. It’s certainly a smaller group at first pitch.

About Ryan Dunleavy

Ryan Dunleavy has covered Rutgers athletics for more than a decade, dating back to his days as a student at his alma mater. He became New Jersey Press Media’s Rutgers women’s basketball beat writer in 2009 and Rutgers football beat writer in 2013. Since joining the staff in 2004, the Morris County native also has covered the NFL, MLB, NBA, the Somerset Patriots and high school sports.